Posted on 05/16/2010 12:35:58 PM PDT by Ready4Freddy
HOUSTON - Reporting its first success in containing the massive Gulf oil leak nearly a month after it started, BP on Sunday said oil and natural gas were flowing via a mile-long pipe to a ship at the surface.
"So far it's working extremely well," BP Senior Executive Vice President Kent Wells said of the strategy of inserting a 4-inch tube into the 21-inch riser, a pipe in the seafloor from where the largest leak is spewing.
"We're very slowly increasing the rate" to get more oil and natural gas up, he told reporters. "We will just learn as we go with this approach." Siphoning oil from a mile down had never before been successful.
It's not clear how much of the overall leak is being captured, Wells said, but that should be known in the next day or two.
In any case, the tube is only an interim strategy until the well head can be capped. That requires drilling a second well to relieve pressure on the leaking well — a process that has started but which is expected to take at least two months.
Glitch a day earlier
On Saturday, the technique was attempted for the first time. Natural gas was siphoned out and then burned off when it got to the surface. Oil also entered the tube but a glitch stopped the strategy before any oil could make it all the way to the surface.
The glitch happened when engineers, via the robotic submarines, tried to connect two pieces of equipment a mile below the water's surface.
BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said one piece of equipment, called the framework, had to be brought to the water's surface so that adjustments could be made to where it fits with the long tube that connects...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Correct, thus far, as in the case of the 79? Mexican accident, the oil is tough to find on the surface. Apparently the benzene is just evaporating away.
Good points.
In addition, the Feds had a containment plan developed way back in 1994 and over the last 16 years and three presidents, nothing was done to implement that plan.
Just goes to show you that the Feds are a Failure no matter which party controls Washington.
Don’t overlook the fact that the Feds were SUPPOSED to have on-hand, a large supply of “fire booms” (not sure that’s what they’re called, but they’re used to corral and burn the oil) by order of a 1999 law requiring them to be stored in case of oil leak emergency. Hmmm.. The Feds never purchased them. How convenient for the pro-green movement.
See post 22
Just wondering.. Sooo.. When does the siphoning stop? How long before the oil runs out?? Would they just keep siphoning until they can build another structure of some sort? Hmmm.
Will there really be any need for that, since you have already determined BP's guilt?
How do they know it’s “working very well”? Can they verify this for us?
Remember, these are the guys who said that it was only gushing 1,000 gallons a day. These guys have been wrong about everything they said or done so far.
Prove it, BP - I don’t take your word for anything.
>>However, in this case, it appears that BP made an egregious error in the operation and should be responsible for all of the costs.
>Is that how the law reads, or is that your personal perspective?
Um, enlighten me who else’s fault it is? It’s BP’s rig, they were making the money, they didn’t take the necessary precautions, BP’s rig blew up.
BP called all the shots on that platform and unless BP can from that either Transocean or Haliburton failed to implement BP directives, this disaster was the fault of BP.
Sorry.. 1994 not 1999. But as always, the Gov’t will never accept any responsibility with Obammy at the helm.
Transocean owns the platform, BP was in control of the drilling operations.
Take a boat out to the drill ship and sniff.
Failing that, fire up a ciggy. That should tell you if they're getting gas from the well.
Until the well is shut in. That will happen when they are able to put another preventer on the wellhead, either before or after the relief wells are finished.
Depending on what the determination is as to the stability of the wellbore, they will either P&A it, or drill out the cement in the production casing and complete the well. Either way, I suspect that they are going to have to remove the original BOP at some point. That'll be fun.
I wonder how much harm to the economy is caused by needless edicts by the government? BP can make a good case that plenty of safe waters were prohibited from being harvested by the bunglers, and the feds should reimburse the economies they needlessly wrecked.
True enough as far as it goes, but don't you get a little sick and tired of the Federal government extracting taxes specifically for the purpose of handling situations such as this and completely failing to execute a prepositioned and designed plan to handle and mitigate these problems. Those taxes pass directly to you at the pump.
Yes
the strategy of inserting a 4-inch tube into the 21-inch riser, a pipe in the seafloor from where the largest leak is spewing.
^
Good news, this can also be used to clean-up natural disaster leaks too, more oil for Democrats and their supporters that use oil regularly. Burn baby, burn...
Such federal plans are and never were designed to actually work in the real world. They are jobs/welfare programs designed to furnish government deadheads with a paycheck.
So much for the “green” image BP tried to build up, eh?
Watch some strange “accident” happen to this latest effort. It can’t possibly be allowed to work.
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